Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Spotlight Wednesdays: Vampire Academy

The word 'vampire' carries a lot of baggage these days, but rest assured, these do not sparkle.

In Mead's vampiric world, there are two kinds of vampires - the good, live Moroi, who only feed without killing and can control the elements, and the bad, undead Strigoi; the Strigoi are your basic vampire: can't go out in the sun, enjoy killing for the fun of it and have no soul.
The plot is based off the idea that Moroi can have kids with humans, and their offspring is called dhampirs. This is what our protagonist, the badass Rose Hathaway, is. Because of the vampire genes, dhampirs are stronger and faster than normal humans, which makes them the perfect bodyguards against the Strigoi.

Rose will not hesitate before kicking your ass to kingdom come, and quite honestly, I'm pretty sure the term BAMF was made with her in mind. And to make it better?

Well, the icing on the cake is what my circle of friends affectionately calls the 'badass Russian god', aka Dimitri Belikov.

For you to have an idea of how amazing these books are, you might think that their appeal is mostly for teenage girls, right? Well, my 54 year-old father picked these up a few years back and kept pestering me to give him the next one, he was so hooked.

And no wonder as well, it has some of the best plot twists known to man (handy hint and tip: do not finish Shadow Kiss without having Blood Promise around handy. Trust me, you'll thank me later on), magic, vampires, fighting sequences worthy of Hollywood (we don't talk about the movie; it was a sad, sad thing - but if you liked that, you will love the books!) and scorching romance that will make literally anyone swoon.